by Jane Smiley
The last row Minnie walked in front of him, pulling out the tassels that were at her level, and Joe walked behind her, pulling out the higher ones. She had a straw hat on (so did he). He couldn’t see even the back of her head, but he could see her hips and her feet. They gave him such a funny feeling that he was a little delirious by the time they got back to the food basket. They drank some water and sat down on a blanket in the shade of the tall corn plants to share the rest of the food. There were more sandwiches, with some sliced sausage, lettuce, and the first of the season’s tomatoes on Mama’s homemade bread; after that, some of Mrs. Frederick’s Linz cookies, with jam in the middle—these were fancy, and she was the only one in the neighborhood who took the time to bake them. The jam in the middle was blackberry, one of Joe’s favorites. Minnie said, “I used to hide those in my coat, and then Frankie would tickle me until I gave him one.”
Joe must have looked dismayed, because Minnie said, “We were only eight and nine.”
“He used to tickle me, too. But it wasn’t for a cookie.”
“What was it for?”
“To make me pee my pants.”
“That’s mean.”
“That’s Frankie.”
“Brothers and sisters are mean. Even Jane Morris shoves her sister Lucy, and Jane is the meekest child I ever saw. I think being mean to siblings is the law of the world.”
Joe didn’t answer. Once again, the discussion had gone past him. He said, “Thanks for helping me. I’ll cut you in on the profits.”
“Oh, please do!”
They folded up the blanket, and Minnie put her hat back on her head. Joe wondered how much Minnie thought about Frankie. He was pretty certain that Frankie never thought about Minnie.
1939
CLAIRE WAS BORN on Frankie’s birthday, but late in the day rather than the middle of the night. Rosanna and Walter had time to get to the hospital in Usherton. Once she was there, under the care of Dr. Liscombe, there were plenty of nurses, all in white uniforms and about nineteen years old. Rosanna could not imagine how she had given birth before, although she could remember it perfectly well. The new hospital had all the latest things—big windows, railings around the beds, linoleum floors, swinging doors, rooms with only two beds in them. After Dr. Liscombe delivered Claire, they took her away, and didn’t bring her back for four hours. What a relief that was! The birth was easy—what birth wasn’t, after five previous ones, Rosanna would like to know—but she felt she deserved a nap, anyway. Once she’d had one, and they put Claire in her arms, she thought it was the first time she had ever looked at her new baby and not gone nuts.
Claire was a seven-pounder (seven pounds, three ounces—when had she ever known the exact weight before?). She had a down-to-earth way about her. She wasn’t an angel and she wasn’t a beauty and she wasn’t the repository of all of Rosanna’s hopes, whatever they were. (What were they? wondered Rosanna.) She was a baby who had Walter’s hair and Rosanna’s nose and someone else’s eyes—maybe Granny Elizabeth? Rosanna smiled at her—who could help it?—and smoothed her dark hair to the side. She put Claire to the breast. She almost said ouch; this was the thing she had forgotten, how much it hurt the first few times. The nurse who had brought the baby said, “Oh, doesn’t it ache, though? There was a lady in here last week whose one-year-old was still nursing, and even she winced when the newborn latched on. But I don’t need to tell you.”
Claire did her job, first on one side, then on the other, and the nurse said “Excellent!” and took the baby away for another four hours. Rosanna, who had forgotten to bring a book along, took another nap.
When the nurses weren’t looking, Rosanna got up and walked around, and so she was standing in the doorway when her mother appeared, walking down the white hallway from the far end, where the elevator was. At first she thought her mother was Oma, so slowly did she walk along, with her head down, a little abashed by the grandeur of the stark walls and the tall doors to the rooms. Rosanna couldn’t help stepping back and letting the door of her room close, and then looking at her own reflection in its circular window. Too old to have a baby, wasn’t she? Thirty-nine, almost, her hair a thin bun. Frankie, now nineteen, had filled her out, given her dimples in her cheeks, made her hair grow an inch a month. Claire had drained her. No more, she thought, and then there was a knock.
Her mother had a bag with her. She set that next to Rosanna on the bed and said, “My dear, you look more like you just went shopping than like you had a baby!”
“Well, it’s more like a vacation here than a birth. I hardly know what to do with myself.”
“Enjoy it, enjoy it. They’re already looking out the door at your place, wondering when you’re coming home. Lillian sent you a poem.” Her mother handed her a piece of paper, and she unfolded it: “We send our love to Baby Claire, / So far away. If we were there, / We’d kiss your toes and fingers, too, /Just to show that we do so love you.” Rosanna said, “Has there ever been such a child?”
“Well, you can say that about any child, really. Each one is his or her own little universe.”
Rosanna pressed the button, and, sure enough, a nurse in a white cap and white shoes eased through the door. Rosanna said, “My mother would like to see the child.”
This nurse was one of the nineteen-year-olds. She said, “I don’t know that we can allow that, Mrs. Langdon. The infants are on a strict schedule.”
“I won’t feed her, if you—”
“It’s not just feeding. They benefit from a clear routine.”
Rosanna looked at her mother, then said to the nurse, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Wilma,” said the nurse.
Rosanna said, “My mother here delivered my second baby. I delivered the last one by myself.”
“I’ll get in trouble,” said Wilma.
Rosanna turned to her mother and said, “How did you get here?”
“Grandpa brought me. He went on to the feed store.”
“In the truck?”
Granny Mary nodded.
Rosanna said, “You’re bringing the baby back to me at eleven, right?”
“Yes. Eleven o’clock feeding, then a bath, then a nap. When you leave the hospital Monday, we’ll give you a schedule and instructions.”
Rosanna bit her lip. She said, “Thank you.”
When the nurse left, she said, “What time is Papa coming by?”
“He said to call him at the feed store.”
“Well, call him and tell him eleven-thirty.” She handed her mother the phone beside the bed.
It was the older nurse who tried to stop them. They had gone through the door past the elevator and were starting down the stairs when she ran up from the floor below and placed herself in front of them. She said, “I don’t believe you’re ready to check out, Mrs. Langdon.”
“I am, though. I’m fine.”
“You can’t take the infant out in this cold.”
“Is it going to be warmer in three days?”
“You are being very irresponsible!”
“Taking my own child home to the place where she’s going to live?”
“She’s two days old! Don’t you live on a farm?”
“Look at it this way. She’s been living on that farm for nine months. I’m sure she’ll feel very comfortable there.”
Granny Mary put her hand on the nurse’s arm and encouraged her to step aside. After a moment, she did. Rosanna was pretty tired, actually, when they got to the bottom of those four sets of stairs, but there was her father, the truck at the curb, warm and running. Granny Mary opened the door, and Rosanna got in. Her mother got in after her and slammed the door. Rosanna could see a hospital person, someone in a suit, hurrying down the steps and gesturing. Her father checked the side-view mirror and pulled away from the curb. Rosanna said, “I think this is the closest we’ll ever come to being gangsters.”
“Well,” said her mother, “Papa here did make his own beer all through Prohibition.” They all laughed
.
Rosanna said, “I don’t see why all of my births have to be so dramatic.”
Granny Mary folded the blanket away from Claire’s little face. Her eyes were open, but she wasn’t crying. Granny Mary said, “They all have happy endings, though.” When they got to the farm half an hour later (they had to go a little slowly because of the bits of four-day-old snow that had drifted over the roads), Walter was out in the barn with Joey, and Lillian and Henry were playing a game with Lois. The kitchen was cold, the range hadn’t been lit in three days, and Rosanna suddenly missed the dull luxury of the hospital. But she knew this was her life. Better to be immersed in it than to see it from afar.
AT THE END of winter, when the weather was too cold for them to go out for recess, and they had sung all the songs in the songbook, Minnie taught them to sew. They pushed four of the tables together and laid out some fabric on it that Minnie had gotten from Dan Crest—blue and white stripes, and enough for everyone to make something. The hope was that by the time they were all finished with their projects, spring would be in full bloom, and they would be able to wear what they had made.
Blue and white stripes reminded Lillian of mattresses and pillows, but she tried to enter enthusiastically into the project. She would make an apron for herself, one with ruffles over the shoulders, and a smocked pinafore for Lois—Lois could do some of the cutting and sewing, and Lillian would do the smocking, in red. Minnie whispered, “I know this fabric is hideous, darling, but it was all he would give me. He couldn’t sell a yard of it, I’m sure.”
Lillian nodded.
Henry decided to make himself trousers and a vest. The stripes would run downward on the trousers and across on the vest. Lillian said, “Don’t you think that’s a little loud, Henry?”
He grinned.
Jane had decided on a gored skirt, and Lucy on a dress. Lillian thought that everyone was getting a good lesson in making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, which was what Mama said that you would have to do for your whole life if you didn’t watch out, so it was never too soon to start.
Lillian helped Henry cut the pattern out of butcher paper that Dan Crest had also given them, and she helped him lay it out when it was his turn to use the pins. At six and a half, he was already pretty good at cutting with scissors. All she had to do was show him how to run the back of the blade along the wood of the table. It took him all of one snowy afternoon to cut out his pieces, but that was okay; Minnie had them sit around him and read their book aloud—it was Tom Sawyer.
Mama couldn’t believe they were sewing at school, but Lillian defended Minnie. She said, “All the rest of the year, we run around, and she lets everyone climb trees and play baseball, even though we’re all girls except Henry.”
Mama actually had pins between her lips as she shook her head. She was mending a rip in Papa’s overalls that he’d gotten climbing the fence. Claire was asleep across the room, so they were keeping their voices low.
“Anyway, she makes him add up inches and feet and yards and measure with a tape, and poke his pins in straight. And if he drops the pins, she makes him count the ones he’s got and find the ones he’s lost.”
“You’re so crazy about Minnie, I must say.”
Mama didn’t seem to like this. Lillian said, “Everyone at school is. She’s fun.”
“Reared on cake and cookies,” said Mama, pulling the last pin out from between her lips and inserting it into the patch. “Well, there’s something to be said for that easygoing way, I suppose.”
Mama did agree with her that the blue and white stripes were very loud, but she gave Lillian thread for smocking—navy and red.
In the afternoons, they sat by the west windows of the school, looking out on the snow and the outhouse, and they sewed while Minnie read aloud. Lillian, who had been sewing since she was eight, was finished with her apron in two days. Jane was not terribly straight in her stitching, so she had to unstitch several times, until she learned to pay attention to what she was doing and stop looking out the window. Lucy was slow, but much more careful than Jane, though she occasionally pricked herself with a pin or a needle. Lois, now nine, tended to forget what she was doing and gawk at Minnie, listening to the story. When Minnie noticed this, she would stop and say, “I can’t go on until Lois stops wasting time.” Lois would go back to sewing. Looking at her seams, Lillian knew she would end up redoing them.
Henry needed help, but he didn’t need that much help, which surprised Lillian. He never pricked himself. He sewed with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, but he was intent, and when he finished the first long seam, the outer seam of his trouser leg, he shouted, “Hooray!” He found it so inspiring that he carried his trousers home on Friday, and worked on them through the weekend. Papa and Joey might have said something mean, but the sight of him on the sofa, staring at the blue and white stripes and sewing, was enough to shut them up.
Mama said, at one point, “So he wants to sew. Opa always knitted. He knitted himself a sweater every couple of years.”
Since no one ever said a bad word about Opa, Papa kept his mouth shut. Lillian was glad that Frankie was in Ames. On Tuesday, Henry set aside the trousers and started on the vest. When she finished Tom Sawyer, Minnie brought some music from home, not songs for them to sing, but music with swoops and big chords. It was so cold in the school that Jane had to make sure that the stove was stoked at all times, and they had to put socks over their hands under their mittens and three pairs of socks inside their shoes. On the way to school, Lillian had to watch Henry to make sure that his muffler didn’t fall down and expose his nose. But after the projects were done and they were sitting once again on the swaying leafy branches of the maple trees, Lillian thought that that week had been the best of the school year, and that Minnie was the sister that she wanted more than anything.
EVEN AFTER the spring came and the weather warmed up, Rosanna left Claire’s cradle in the front room. The house had been so cold for three weeks that they had all slept there—Lillian on the sofa, Joe on a kind of camp bed, Henry on the floor, and Claire in the cradle at the foot of the stairs. Walter and Rosanna slept in their room, but with all the vents open and blankets over the windows. At the top of the stairs, you could actually feel a warm breeze if the stove was going strong, but away from the door, it was quite chilly. Well, they survived, and now the daffodils were out and it was only a few weeks until the last frost date and time for the corn to go in. The good thing about having the cradle there was that Walter sat down on the couch when he came in and out of the house and chatted with Claire. And whether that was the reason, or whether Claire simply appealed to him because she was calm but alert, Walter didn’t know. Fact was, he liked her. She was his baby.
Rosanna was not unkind to her—her touch was gentle and her look was motherly—but she didn’t make of her what she had of Lillian and Henry (and he couldn’t remember anything about Frank as a baby or Joey, except that Frank was always throwing things and Joey whining). Walter knew that was because the baby wasn’t blonde and looked like a Langdon rather than a Vogel. However, Walter reminded himself, what did it matter to Claire? She was nursed, she was changed, she was carried from place to place. She was set up against the corner where the arm of the sofa met the back, she was given the tiniest bits of mush and applesauce from the tip of a spoon. Lillian sang her songs, and Henry played patty-cake with her, and maybe only Walter noticed a difference. Maybe Rosanna herself didn’t even notice a difference.
But that left an opening for him. What he liked to do was sit beside the cradle while Henry ran around the room in his silly striped suit (which he was wearing into rags) and get her to laugh—not by touching or tickling her, but by turning his head away and turning it back, opening his mouth and slamming it closed, sticking out his tongue and pulling it in, putting his hands over his face and pulling them away again. She laughed and laughed, and he said, “Clairy, Clairy, Clairy, she’s so merry!” and then laughed himself.
SCHOOL HAD HARDLY even begun when Lawrence showed up at Frank’s tent and suggested they go to Chicago for Labor Day weekend. He was bored with his classes.
Frank said, “We’ve been in class one week.”
“I know. But I took a look at the syllabus.”
“You’re supposed to look at the syllabus and buy the books.”
“Well, I try not to.”
The Flying Cloud was parked on the bridge. Frank climbed up the bank, brushed off his trousers, and said, “You need to wash this baby.” Somehow, though he was two years younger than Lawrence, he had become the older brother. But a nice older brother—no kicks, no slaps, no punches, no yelling, just advice. For example, he had told Lawrence to get rid of Gertie Elkins, and he had. Gertie Elkins had had “gold digger” written all over her, and she had said the same thing of Frank, so Frank had told her, “What you see is what you feel, baby. Whores are cheaper than you.” He said, “Is there a game?”
“Not unless we stay till Tuesday. There’s a doubleheader Monday against the Pirates.”
“I have class Tuesday.”
They got into the car. Sometimes Frank thought that his real friend was the car, not Lawrence.
Lawrence said, “Maybe Diz’ll pitch.”
“Dizzy Dean is done for,” said Frank.
“But I like to see him anyway. And—”
“And what?”
“I want to see the communists.”
“Julius and Eloise?”
“I miss them.”
“They’re about to be drummed out of the Party, Julius is such a Trotskyite.”
“I would like to see them even if they were only socialists. Eloise is sexy.”
“She’s thirty-four years old.”
“Myrna Loy was born in 1905.”
Frank said, “She’s too old for you, too.”
Julius and Eloise lived in a better place than they had—in Rogers Park, just south of Evanston, not where the big houses were, but not far from the lake, either. They had three bedrooms now, and he had taken Lawrence to visit them twice already. Anyway, they had plenty of hot water and it was cheap to stay there. Lawrence loved the communists. He had let Julius take him to a meeting and talk to him about world revolution, which Julius was happy to do, even though Lawrence was obviously petit-bourgeois scum and, as Frank said to him, “He will execute you after the revolution, you know that, don’t you?”
